By John Gage
by ardavenport
Summary: While healing up from his hit-and-run accident Johnny goes to class.
1. Chapter 1

**BY JOHN GAGE**

by ardavenport

- - - Part 1

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**My name is John Gage. I am a firefighter-paramedic with the Los****s A**** Angeles County Fire Department.****I am on sick leave with a broken leg. I was hit by a car last month and it is still ****npt**** not healed yet, but it is getting much better. I should be able to take my qualifying exam to get back to work after this class. I do not have a date yet. That depends on what ****Doctor Early ****the doctor says.**

**I am taking this class because I think it would be a tremendous opportunity to learn to ****write and ****write stories. I know how to write, of course. My ****fried****friend, Chuck Morley, told me what a tremendous teacher you were so I signed up with him for this class. Chuck works in the film business, but he is between jobs right now . . . **

Maddie Worten continued reading down the essay; after the third 'tremendous' she started marking them. It was bad enough to earn a lot more from her red pencil, but experience had taught her not to be too harsh on the introductory assignment. It was really for her anyway, an evaluation of the writing level of her students so she knew how to organize the class.

She had seen a lot worse. Francine's essay about herself had been loaded with sentence fragments, Nina needed to get better acquainted with her dictionary and Sandra wrote paragraph-length run-on sentences that required a couple readings to determine their most likely meaning. John _did_ understand the basics of simple English grammar. He wrote within his range, with short, declarative and dull sentences with no misspellings at all, though there were plenty of strike-outs.

At least Gage typed his essay - - properly double-spaced; he knew how to follow directions, unlike Helen - - so Maddie didn't have to decipher his longhand. . . .

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Tap, tap, tap. Tap-tap, tap-tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap-tap, tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap. Tap. Zzzhhing! Tap-tap - - -

"Johnny?"

John Gage looked up from the typewriter and turned around to see his partner, Roy DeSoto in blue paramedic shirt badge and name-tag, peering at him from the doorway.

"What're you doing here?" He came into the captain's office to stand over Gage, a few notebook pages of scribbled handwriting on the desk next to the typewriter.

"I'm writing." He turned back to the machine to peck out the rest of the word, '**something**'.

"Writing? Writing what? What for?" Roy walked over to look at the work emerging from the Station Fifty-One's office typewriter. The wastebasket was half-full of crumpled wads.

"For a class, Roy, for a class. It's at this community college." He grinned. "Creative writing."

Tap-tap-tap tap-tap. '**like a box of chocolates. It has all different kinds - -**'

"Creative writing?" He looked down at his partner in plaid shirt and old jeans, one leg cut off to expose the cast on his right leg. John earnestly pecked out the sentence; his crutches leaned against the side of the desk.

'**- - like chocolate creams and vanilla creams and coconuts and cherries and caramels and nuts.**'

"Are you writing a story?"

"No, man. It's too early for that. This is just my essay. I'm supposed to write 500 words about my word. Hey, what other kinds of chocolates are there? I need this to be 500 words long." He sat back as if in temporary exhaustion from gathering his requisite word count. "Man, that's a lot."

"Your word? What word?"

"My word, Roy, my word." He dug around in the layers of pages on the desk and held up a notebook page. Roy took it.

"Onmibus?"

"Yeah. Everybody got a different word. That one's mine. I'm supposed to write about what it is. How I feel about it." He gestured with his hands.

"Well, how do you feel about it?"

He threw his hands down. "I don't know Roy. I never heard of it before. But I need 500 words about it for tonight."

"Well, what does it mean?"

"It's like a bunch of different stuff. Or it's a bus with a bunch of different people on it. Or it's something that has a bunch of different stuff in it. I don't know. I thought maybe if I wrote about a bunch of different chocolates that might look good to some of the girls."

"Girls." Roy's response took on a less baffled tone.

"Yeah. Girls. You see Chuck Morely told me about it. This teacher writes these romance novels under another name. You know the kind that chicks really like. So, a lot of them sign up to take this class from her."

"You're going to learn how to write romance novels, just so you can meet girls?"

"No, Roy, it's not about writing novels. It's just like a general creative writing thing. Chuck and I signed up for it."

"That guy in the first aid class? The one we gave to those movie people? The one who introduced you to that waitress? Diane? The one who dumped you?"

His smile vanished. "It was Deena. And she didn't dump me."

"Okay." Roy just shrugged. Johnny hated getting dumped though he never stopped liking girls no matter how many times they dumped him. And since the hit-and-run accident his one short infatuation with his physical therapist never resulted in even one date.

Johnny's enthusiasm returned. "Anyway, Chuck heard that a lot of chicks really like this class, so we signed up."

"So are there're a lot of girls in this class?"

He grinned back. "Yeah. There's more than twenty of 'em. Well, except for Mrs. Teasdale; she's like sixty. And a couple others are married. And Amy's got an engagement ring. And Tina's like over thirty. But there's over a dozen left. There were a couple of guys, but they didn't show up for the second class. So, it's just me and Chuck in the middle of a bunch of beautiful women." He paused as if he expected envy from Roy, who showed only polite interest. "We think we can like help'em with their homework and stuff."

Roy looked at his partner and the desk cluttered with omnibus notes.

"So, what are you doing here?"

"Oh, well." He squirmed a bit. "When class is over everyone just wants to get out. And . . . well those girls move pretty fast." He sadly glanced down to his cast. "The Cap said I could use the typewriter as long as he wasn't in the office and if I bring my own paper. It looks better if it's typed. But what are _you_ doing here? It's not our shift."

Roy waved back toward the fire engine and squad parked outside the office. "Oh, Frank was sick, so I'm doing a double shift."

"Oh." He glanced down at his cast again, signed by everyone at Station Fifty-One and several people at Rampart General Hospital. Double shifts could be tough but at the moment it sounded pretty good to him. Then his attention returned to the typewriter. "But, I gotta finish this essay. What other kinds of chocolates are there besides these?"

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Going between the rows of school desks, Maddie handed back the essays to her class with varying reactions. Paul and Mitch had dropped out and gotten refunds, no doubt because of her stern warning on the first day that she would not be teaching any type of script-writing whatsoever. That always weeded out the aspiring screen-writers. A couple others had left for unknown reasons, but there was an even two dozen left and if they stayed for the second week they were more likely to stay for the whole eight weeks.

Debbie shyly accepted her handwritten paper with a soft, 'Thank-you Miss Worten.' Maddie had a strong feeling that the young girl was a fan of Tara Swain, Maddie's alter-ego with a half-a-dozen romance novels to her name. It was the worst kept secret on campus that she was Tara Swain. So, more than a few of her students were aspiring authors.

Regrettably, none of this batch had much of a chance of that, which was a shame. Good writers handed in more interesting homework. But if they were already good, then they were less likely to need her help. And Maddie knew quite well how abysmal her prose had been at their age (at least her younger students). As long as they worked for it, she would give them whatever help she could.

Chuck scowled at her red notes on his handwritten pages and did not look up. John at least made eye contact and smiled as he took his essay. His omnibus box of chocolates had made her laugh, it was so bad, crammed with the most ridiculous confections just to pad out his essay to exactly 500 words (he had missed erasing some pencil marks that he had been using for his word count). If he had intentionally written it to be funny, she would have been impressed, but she knew he hadn't.

"Now, you'll all notice that I'm just correcting your grammar and spelling." She handed an essay to Judy who stared wide-eyed up at her. "You should have all had a chance to get a copy of _Strunk and White_ from the bookstore. That should be all you need if you have questions about grammar and style and you should all have access to a dictionary." She refrained for looking at the worst spelling offenders.

She handed the last essays to Liz, Mary Beecher, Sally and Mary Meyer.

"These first two essays have just been to get you started writing. This isn't an English class but you all need to use proper grammar and spelling so your readers can understand you. I've made a lot of corrections on some of your papers, but remember this class is pass/fail. There are no good or bad writers here; you will only fail if you don't do the work."

She headed back to the desk at the front of the classroom, a smudged and well-used blackboard on the wall behind it. "Now up until now we've only been talking about beginnings . . . "

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Tap, tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap, tap, tap-tap-tap, tap-tap. Tap.

"So, how's it going, Mr. Hemingway?"

John Gage grit his teeth and hunched further over the typewriter. "It's going fine, Chet."

Chet Kelly lifted his head, trying to peer over Gage's shoulders. "Doesn't really look it. What's supposed to happen after the sun comes up?"

Gage sat up and pushed away from the desk, forcing his critic to back up. "Chet don't you have some latrines to clean or something?"

"Oh, it's not my turn. Stoker's doing it."

"Yeah, well, I'm sure there's something else around here that needs to be cleaned."

"Hey, Chet." Roy DeSoto came into the office with Burt Dwyer who was taking over Gage's shift on the squad. "Cap needs you by the hose tower."

"Better be careful with Gage here, guys. He's a little sensitive about his work." Kelly sauntered backward toward the door. Snarling, his target half-lifted himself up on the armrests of the wooden chair, but the cast on his leg proved that an empty threat. With an evil smirk on his lips, Kelly disappeared while Roy and Burt came in and leaned on the captain's tidy metal desk opposite Gage.

"So, how's it going?" Burt's friendly inquiry was without sarcasm, but John was still wary.

"Oh, kinda slow, I guess."

Roy folded his arms over his chest. "What's the assignment?"

"I'm supposed to write a beginning for a story."

"What story?" Roy tilted his head.

John shrugged. "The teacher says it doesn't matter. She just wants us to learn about how to start them. Techniques to draw them in. Get people interested." He gestured in the same way Miss Worten had a few nights ago.

"Still need 500 words?"

"Yeah." He threw his hand down. "But the problem is that it's tough getting a story started if I don't know where it's going. It's just really hard coming up with a . . . . a - - "

"Beginning?" Burt flashed a cheerful smile under his mustache.

"Ha-ha, very funny." He raised a semi-imploring hand to his partner - - -

Oooooooeeeeeeee-mmmmaaaaahhhh - BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Station Fifty-One – Fire alarm at the school – Five-Seven-Three-Two Alameda - Five-Seven-Three-Two Alameda - Cross Street, Finnerly - Time Out: Ten-Twelve.

"Gotta go." Roy and Burt were out the door before Gage could continue. A moment later the outer door of the station rattled up, the engines started and then the sirens. Then they were gone. He stared off in the direction he heard them go. He could picture the school; the station had done public relations visits for the schoolchildren there. He hoped it wasn't bad. But since the call said 'fire alarm', it was likely that a student had pulled the alarm and would be in big trouble for it.

Slumping down in his seat, he envied his station-mates. Days off were great, especially after long busy shifts and all-night fires, but his whole life was one long day off now and he was dying for some action. He glumly looked down at the mostly blank typewritten page and his scrawled notes scattered on the desk before gazing back in the direction of the fire alarm.

He looked down at the typewriter. Then up again.

Ripping the page out of the typewriter, he reached for a fresh sheet of paper. "I know a good beginning . . ."

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**. . . had to quickly control bleeding from the scalp by compressing the scalp with the fingers against the skull. And when the engine crew brought the drug box, a pressure dressing was applied with a self-adhering roller bandage . . .**

Maddie supposed that this essay was medically accurate. John had said he was a paramedic. She still wasn't exactly sure what that was, but it was obviously much more than a fireman giving first aid. It read like an instruction manual and she wrote a note in the margin saying so. She had told her students to 'write what they knew' at every opportunity and John had taken it to heart. He had begun with fire engines racing out of their station and now with his third 'events' essay for the class she had read about a car fire, smoke inhalation and a head injury caused by a fall down a flight of stairs.

Unfortunately, even with all that action, his storys still read like flat recitations of facts. She had banned the whole class from using the same adjectives more than once in a single homework after John handed in one with 'stupendous' five times; Ellen used 'beautiful' seven times and the prize went to Laura with 'interesting' nine times in one assignment.

The few times John reached for some feeling or a metaphor, he would wildly misplace them with a 'fire blazing and crackling like the sun at high noon' or a 'red lights flashing and loudly screaming with the urgency of the call'.

However, John's essays were better than the ones written by his friend, Chuck, who seemed to be hardly trying, or if he was, he had shockingly little imagination. After the first few classes, it became apparent that the only two men in the class were far more interested in the women in the seats next to them than creative writing. Maddie strongly suspected that Suzy's essay about a lousy double-date with two guys (one with a cast on his leg) who took their dates to a hot dog stand evidenced how successful they were.

'Write how the people in the story feel about what happens to them. Use all of the senses.'

John had been listening when she said that to the class, but in the burning house essay he had not once mentioned what the fire smelled like. But John wasn't the only one with this problem. Tina had done an entire essay about making a cherry cake without once writing about what it tasted like.

She was going to talk to them about characterization next . . .

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**- - - END Part 1**


	2. Chapter 2

**BY JOHN GAGE**

by ardavenport

**- - - Part 2**

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Tap, tap, tap-tap-tap. Tap. Tap. Tap Tap. . . . Tap.

"Roy!"

Tap. Tap. Tap-tap.

"Roy!"

Tap. Tap. . . . Tap.

"What?" Roy stuck his head in the office.

"It's not going well."

"What, your essay? What's wrong? I thought you were supposed to write about a villain."

"I am, I am. But it's just not working out."

Tap. Tap.

Holding a greasy rag, Roy came into the office as John sat back in the chair with a creak of frustration.

"I thought you were gonna write about that captain you had in training."

"I was, I was. But . . . " He sighed. ". . . thinking about some of the stuff he said in training . . . I mean, Roy I've gotta make a confession. I wasn't that smart when I first signed up with the department."

"Oh." Roy resisted the urge to say anything about how much of a non-surprise this was.

"I mean, Captain Grant was right about some of that stuff. And, y'know maybe it was a good idea for him to be tough on us." John held up a knowing finger. "You know how hard-headed some of those green recruits can be."

"Yeah, they can be thick-headed." Roy looked right at his partner when he said that but the remark went right over Johnny's head.

"And I'm not so sure that Captain Grant was that bad of a guy to base my villain on."

"Yeah. You might want to tell him that next time you're helping out with training at the Academy."

John shrugged. "Yeah, I guess." The mostly empty white paper in the typewriter prompted him. "But now I haven't got a villain to write about."

"Well, make something up. It's creative writing."

"Yeah, I guess. But I need something to base him on. Somebody really horrible. I mean really bad. And really mean, to get me going. Miss Worten told us to write from experience and she's right. She's right, Roy!" He waved his hands for emphasis. "It's easier to write about things I know about. It just comes out more natural. So, I need to think of someone who's just soooooo . . . "

Roy's blue eyes lit up.

"What?" John perked up, hopeful.

"I know who." He pointed at Gage. "That nurse. The one you had at Rampart after the accident."

John's mouth opened wide. "Yeah!" His hands jittered with excitement. "Yeah! She's PERFECT!" Turning back to the typewriter, he ripped out the page with a zing, crumpled it up and tossed it aside, missing the wastebasket. He swiftly rolled a new sheet in and lined it up.

"She can be a nurse, too."

"But you can't use her real name."

"I know that, I know that, Roy." He put a hand to his mouth in thought. "It's gotta be something really good."

"Um, how about, Cassandra DeVille." Roy, who had also experienced this woman's tyrannical 'tender, loving care' after being injured in a fire, joined in the fun.

"Hmmmmmm, no," John didn't like it, "it's too theatrical." His brows furrowed. "I know!" Ho pointed at his partner. "Florence Cratchet! Yeah . . ."

Roy thought that Cratchet was too theatrical, but it wasn't too bad, either. John muttered about his new villain over the typewriter.

". . . she's got a face like a battle axe and - - - "

"A voice like fingernails on a blackboard?"

"Yeah! That's it!" He started typing as rapidly as he could.

**Nurse Florence Cratchet walked down the hospital hallway, her evil eye on the lookout for any patients out of their rooms. The orderlies ducked out of her way. She checked her schedule to see which patient she would see next - - -**

"How about torture." Roy pointed at the page.

"Yeah."

**-see ****torture next. It was time to give baths to helpless patients with broken legs and arms and ribs. Her first patient - - **

"How about victim."

"Yeah. Good idea." John typed faster.

**first ****patient **** victim was in traction, pinned to his bed . . . **

Tap-tap-tap, tap-tap-taptaptap.

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Maddie curled her lip at the misadventures of evil Nurse Cratchet. Any hospital with a staff member like that would have gone out of business from all the lawsuits. But at least John was showing some imagination. His words were much more descriptive even if his villain was wildly over-blown. And he had gone far over his minimum 500 words. She marked a few run-on sentences, but there were no other serious problems. It far exceeded Chuck's half-hearted attempt.

Ellen had handed in an essay about a man of Chuck's general description getting overly fresh with a woman with a large heavy purse.

It was time to get the class outlining some story plots.

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Rrrrrrriiiiiiiiiinnnnnnggggg gg!

Rrrrrrriiiiiiiiiinnnnnnggggg gg!

"Hello?"

"Roy, what do you think we add a refinery fire to our shift?"

"What? Johnny? What are you talking about?"

"Our story outline, Roy. I think Miss Worten likes the outline we've been working on. She put a little star on it tonight."

"Our outline?"

"Yeah, you helped me. But Miss Worten says it needs more structure, like a climax. And it has to have a dramatic theme. Some kind of journey thing for the hero. I thought maybe a really big refinery fire would give it a good ending."

"You know I'm at home now, right?"

"Yeah, I'm at home, too. Chuck just dropped me off. Mike Stoker can give me a ride to the station and my neighbor says he can pick me up before I get a ride with him to the store. We can talk about the outline tomorrow when you get into work."

"But - - "

"Hey, gotta go. See ya tomorrow."

"But - - "

Click.

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Maddie went down John's revised outline:

**Fire**

**Fire**

**Fire**

**Heart Attack**

**Kid stuck in an old building**

**Fire**

**Trash Fire**

**Car accident**

**Fire with man having a heart attack**

**Drunk driver car accident**

**Brush fire**

**Car accident with a drunk driver having a heart attack**

**Big fire**

She wondered why all of Los Angeles County hadn't burned down if John's fire station was this busy. And, were there really that many drunks driving cars?

He had obviously exaggerated things, the descriptive paragraph for each event was far too technical and John Gage's idea of a story climax was simply ending the day with a fire bigger than all the others. Maddie put in some notes about adding personal description. With all that fire, John had failed to say anything about it being hot.

He seemed really excited about his outline and she liked that even if the plot was formulaic and he equated flammable action with tension for the characters. Getting the students motivated was half the battle for a creative writing class.

His friend, Chuck, was dropping out. Apparently, he had a film job and was going to Arizona for two months. John lost his ride, since he couldn't drive with a cast on his right leg, but Mrs. Teesdale said she lived in the same area and would take him, saying that they all needed to start car-pooling these days anyway with the energy crisis and all.

Maddie drummed her fingers on the desk in her small apartment, the stack of essays next to her. Her purring cat rubbed against her leg. She wrote a suggestion that his focus should be narrowed to fewer events to make the outline stronger. He had put a lot more work in it than she would have expected from a man who was taking the class just meet women.

Maddie was getting essays from the girls about bad dates who bought cheap dinners, drove ugly cars and only talked about camping. But even if writing was not his original goal, John Gage seemed to think that he should also do the classwork, too. He may be a would-be swinger, but he obviously had an old-fashioned upbringing about work. Maddie appreciated that.

She finished making a few notes to John's outline and picked up the next. Mrs. Teesdale wrote about gardening.

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"Kind of lame, isn't it?"

John grimaced back at Chet Kelly. In a moment of weakness he had let the other man read the story that he had just typed up. Kelly leaned on the captain's desk in the station's little office, typewritten pages clutched in his hairy paw. Roy wasn't there; the squad was out on a run.

"What do you mean lame? It's not lame."

"Well, I mean really; we went on this run four months ago. Isn't the captain going to bust you for using the logs for this class of yours?"

He held the pages out within reach and John grabbed them back. "It's not just from the logs. I changed things. Like the TV shows. You know, protect the innocent?"

"Oh, yeah." Chet Kelly looked up toward the ceiling thoughtfully. "I guess it is different. Like, I don't remember the paramedics doing everything. What's the engine crew supposed to be doing? Standing there with their fingers In their ears?"

"They're not doing everything."

"Oh, well, maybe not everything. One of the firemen that that lady that her son is in good hands. After the paramedics spot the fire, run into the house, put the fire out and bandage the kid's arm." Kelly learned forward, lecturing. "We do have hoses and water on the engine, you know."

"Yeah, well, we know how to put out fires, too. I'm just writing what I know. That's what writers do, Chet. We write what we know."

"Oh, yeah. Well, instead of having the paramedics putting out all the fires single-handed, why don't you write about getting hit by a car? You know a whole lot about that, too."

John's eyes widened in surprise. He drew back. Kelly's mouth gaped, a little surprised about what had come out of it. He held up his hands in hasty surrender.

"Hey man, I didn't mean that."

John turned his back to him and put the pages on the desk.

"Hey, I was just kidding. I didn't mean it."

John stared down at the typewriter. Chet's tone was now as sincere as he ever got as he stumbled over his apology. John remembered hearing the same voice while he was lying on a dark street with the pain really starting to sink in, black sky above. Stoker, Lopez, Captain Stanley and especially Roy, they all used that same tone as they lifted him up onto the backboard. It was something beyond the professional reassurance that they all used to calm a victim. It was personal.

"You know how I am. I'm always joking around."

John sneered and looked back over his shoulder. "Yeah, I know how you are, Chet."

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" **. . . now I hope you've learned a valuable lesson about not playing with matches," Charlie's father said sternly to his son.**

**Little Charlie nodded, feeling really guilty about almost burning up his parents' living room. Plus his hand was smarting pretty bad even though the nice paramedic who looked at it said it wasn't bad and that his parents should just take him to the doctor instead of to the hospital in an ambulance which would have been very expensive for his parents . . . .**

John's essay was really more public service announcement than story. The dialogue was horribly stilted. And it was highly unlikely that a team of firefighters happened be outside on their street inspecting fire hydrants when the drapes went up, but she was willing to give that a pass. It was a decent expansion from his outline.

Maddie stroked the cat in her lap as she scanned down the page. She had felt something when the boy was caught in his hiding place where he had been experimenting with his father's lighter.

She complimented the description and the action - - Maddie always looked for something positive to say about even the most wretched writing - - and inserted a few slashes into a paragraph-long sentence to suggest where it might be broken up. Shorter sentence always made better action . . .

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The squad came back alone.

John put the typewritten pages down on the desk and reached for his crutches; he'd gotten a lot better getting around and the cast would come off soon.

He heard a car door open, but when he emerged from the office, he saw Paulo Robles, who was covering his shift, disappear into the dormitory. Roy was still sitting at the driver's seat. John's intention to get some more descriptive details for his expanded outline evaporated.

This was something bad.

He limped over to the driver's side of squad, not getting too close. Roy had his arms over the steering wheels, eyes down. Eventually, he glanced up and then pushed the car door open. John averted his eyes, staying back, leaning between his crutches. Roy shut the car door behind him and went into the day room. John followed.

Going to the kitchen table, John pulled out a chair and sat down, leaning the crutches next to him. He could guess what had happened; the question was who.

"What happened?"

Roy leaned on the table, eyes cast downward at the loose news-pages of the _LA Times_. "Fred Norris got killed."

John took a moment to place the name - - a fraction of a second of guilty relief that it was not someone he knew well or was close to - - before he realized that the man was a paramedic.

"Fred? At Eighty-Seven?"

"Yeah." Roy still didn't look up.

Station Eighty-Seven. He had heard all the bells; it had been a big fire; there had to have been at least ten engines.

"How'd it happen?"

"He fell off a roof." Roy sighed. "Guy up there fell part way through a weak spot, broke his leg. Fred and C.K. Grimmes went up to get him down." He extended a hand to tug a corner of the _Times_ toward him. "They were getting the guy down when Fred fell off." His blue eyes turned up to his partner for the first time. "We got right to him, but he broke his neck on the fall." He cast his eyes down to the paper again. There was a headline about the president tripping on a rug. "I didn't say anything about it . . . but I don't think he had his safety line tied off right."

'Oh man . . ." John sat back in his chair; he and Roy were completely in synch about safety; every detail counted. They had both complained about serving the odd shift with someone who let things slide. None of the guys Roy had been working with while John was on sick leave had that problem - - the first one, Craig Bryce, had driven Roy nuts with an obsessive adherence to regulations that went beyond the call of sanity. But while his patience had been badly frayed, safety had not been an issue.

Now, it was way too late to dress Norris down for being sloppy; he was dead.

"Did he have a wife? Any family?"

Roy shrugged. "Don't know."

The kitchen clock on the wall ticked, a normally tiny sound made large in the silence. John reached for a distracting headline from the _Times_.

A sudden, extended scrape of wood on wood ended with John's crutches clattering to the floor.

It was a perpetual problem for anyone with their leg in a cast; where to put the crutches and how to keep them from falling down. John had embarrassed himself a few times at his creative writing class and on the few unsuccessful dates that had resulted from it. Grumbling, he reached down to pick them up and prop them more securely next to the table again. He had gotten a lot of practice at that.

Sitting back up, he glimpsed Roy's blue eyes darting away down to the table again. Roy's hand smoothed down a big page of newsprint. John glanced down at the crutches and the cast on his leg that would come off very soon. Under his shirt, the scar from his splenectomy was healing well according to Dr. Early. He could almost forget that it was there. But the accident . . . In some ways it was easier to be the victim while things were done to you. All you had to do was hurt, a lot. Roy did all the hard stuff that night.

The kitchen clock clicked the seconds off loudly. John's neighbor would not pick him up for another fifteen minutes. He reached for a folded section of the _Times_.

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**- - - END Part 2**


	3. Chapter 3

**BY JOHN GAGE**

by ardavenport

**- - - Part 3**

* * *

John came in with Mrs. Teesdale, but even though he was early, he did not try to engage any of the girls in conversation. He just handed in his essay and went to his seat, carefully leaning his crutches by the empty desk behind him.

It seemed like he had exhausted his dating possibilities. None of the women looked hostile, but they made no effort to be friendly to him either. Maybe the ones he had dated had warned the others off, or maybe they just didn't want to go on a double date with him and Mrs. Teesdale since John had lost his ride when Chuck went off on his movie job. Now, he was sitting in the middle of class, surrounded by mostly attractive young women.

Maddie got up and handed back the last assignment.

Liz and Tina had definitely improved, learning how to write from one point-of-view instead of five, making it impossible to figure out who was doing what. Nadine was taking only three paragraphs to describe her protagonist and her history instead of five; it still completely stopped all the action in the story, but it wasn't as bad as it was in her first story assignment. Julie still needed to find less clumsy variations on 'said'. At the end of the last class Debbie had worked up the courage to ask for an autograph. Maddie had happily signed the paperback, but she wished Debbie's admiration could translate into more writing talent. Her essay had quite a few red marks, but that did not dim her cheerfulness as she took the corrected pages from Maddie.

Next to her, John noticed the smile and perked up a little.

"Hey, you did okay?"

"Yeah." Debbie politely lowered her green eyes and then looked away. To Maddie, John was like a cat stuck at the bottom of a tall canary cage, a chirping flock fluttering overhead, completely unattainable. She handed him his papers, a story about a raging fire in a warehouse.

"Thank-you, John." She smiled at him and his one-sided grin, dimmed by Debbie's coolness, returned. She finished handing back the homework and went to the front of the class again.

"Now we concentrated on action last time. Let's talk about how you're going to use it. . . ."

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Fred Norris has not been married. He did not even have a girl friend. But he was an only child and his mother was a widow. She stood with a couple of other relations at the service, occasionally dabbing at her eyes under her black veil.

In dress uniform, John sat next to Roy with the other firefighters. Roy's wife, Joanne decided not to come; she did not know Fred at all, so John had come with his partner. There were a lot of other firemen and paramedics. Some reporters attended, to write about the man who had died in the line of duty. Fred had also been a veteran, so there were military honors, too.

When the service was over, Roy went to talk to the guys from Fred's station for a moment while John stayed in his seat. His cast was itching. Doctor Early was supposed to take it off the next day. Roy came back with the captain from Fred's station and John hastily reached for his crutches.

The older man waved him down. "No, stay where you are, son. I just wanted to say that I appreciate you coming, with your leg and all."

"Oh, it's not bad, Sir. It's almost healed up - - "

The Captain cut him off. "I know, I know. And I can see you're raring to get back in the saddle." He shook his head. "Fred was like that, too. I just . . . ." He paused, his lined face briefly stricken before he let the thought drop. "I just wanted to thank-you for coming." He patted Roy on the arm. "Both of you."

Roy and John watched him move on to a group of paramedics clustered together nearby.

"You ready to go?"

John looked up at his partner. "Yeah. I guess." Funerals were a lousy place to hang out.

They went to Roy's car, an old two-seat foreign convertible. Roy opened the door for John and put the crutches in the back before getting in himself.

"So what time to you need me to take you to the hospital to get that cast off?" Roy headed the little sports car out of the parking lot.

"Eight if you can."

Roy nodded. "Okay. Do you have any more physical therapy?"

"Just enough to get my leg back into shape so I can pass the department's physical."

"But Early's going to pass you, right?" Roy's tone rose with a little worry .

"Oh, yeah. He said I've healed up fine."

Roy drove down the street. Above, the sky was the usual brilliant, cloudless and slightly smoggy blue.

"Hey don't you have that class tonight?"

"Yeah."

"Well, don't you have to type up your assignment? Do you want to swing by the station?"

"Oh, I finished that last night."

"Really?" Roy looked from the street to John and back again in surprise. "You're not waiting until the last minute to finish it like you usually do?"

"I don't wait until the last minute."

"Yeah, I guess you leave an hour or two to spare. So, what was the assignment this time?"

"Well, it's the last assignment. She just asked us to write another essay about ourselves. So we could compare it to what we did for the first class. So, we can see how we improved."

"Oh. So, did you improved?"

One side of his mouth curled upward. "Yeah. I think so. I learned a lot."

"Oh. That's good."

Roy drove down the road, stopping a couple of times at lights.

"So, did you get any dates?

John's expression turned sour.

"No. At least, not any good one." He slouched in his seat. "Unless you want to count Mrs. Teesdale."

Roy grinned. But it was a good and sympathetic kind of grin and Johnny joined him.

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**A couple of months ago, I was hit by a car. It was a hit-and-run accident. At two in the morning the station got a call for a lady at a bar. She was fine. She was just spaced out. So, we go back to the squad and I heard a car rev it's ****enginge**** engine. It did not have it's lights on, but I could see it coming right at me under the street light. It was weird, because you see cars all the time, but this one was coming right at me and I did not have time to be really ****scarred**** scared. I had just enough time to think that I should get out of the way before it hit me. It was like getting one side of my body smashed. It was so quick, but I could feel things breaking inside. And everything just flipped and spun all around me.**

**Then I was on the ground and the guys were all around, looking down at me and I did not want to be there so much. But I couldn't get up. I did not hit my head; I had my helmet on. It could have been a whole lot worse if I hadn't. A whole lot worse. My partner, Roy, is there and he takes my vitals and puts me on a backboard with the other guys. I have been hurt on the job before. But this was way worse than any of the others. I hurt so bad, I don't even know if I hurt my back. I didn't. Roy is upset, really upset. That is bad, because nothing gets Roy upset. He is doing everything right, but I can tell. And the longer I lie there, the more pain I feel. I know my leg is broken really bad. The only way I know that there isn't any bone breaking the skin is because Roy doesn't have to apply a pressure bandage, just the split. I'm not losing blood. At least, not on the outside. I am sure something is wrong on the inside. I've seen victims of accidents like this and if there's internal bleeding it can go bad really fast. I had a friend who was a cop and he got hit by a car and died at the hospital. Roy and I were on that run. We knew it was bad and I was lying there after getting hit by that car and thinking it must have been like this for him. I could taste blood and that's bad.**

**Roy takes me to Rampart General Hospital in the ambulance and all the way there I am thinking how I really, really do not want to be there. I am thinking about what I have to do to get out of this****, but that's crazy.**** It's crazy, but I still wanted to not be there really, really bad.**

**We get to Rampart and the doctors are people I see all the time when I'm working and I can see they thinks it's bad. And my belly starts hurting worse and worse and I know what that means. Roy is still there and I can see that he really, really doesn't want me to be there just as much as me. I want the doc to give me something for the pain really bad. And I really don't want to die on Roy, too.**

**They take my spleen out in surgery. You can live without a spleen. But it hurts a whole lot the first day or so after that. And then I'm stuck in the hospital for a couple weeks, because of the spleen and I need physical therapy for my leg. Hospital food is really bad. Everything is soggy and soft and you have to eat what they give you, and the jello always has a thick skin on it. Roy smuggled in some cheeseburgers a couple of times. And he and Marco Lopez from the station got hurt in a fire and ended up in Rampart with me for a couple days. But it wasn't bad for them, not really. Except for the nurse we had. She was a drill ****sargent**** sergeant. A man shouldn't have to take what she did to us.**

**The doctor says my leg will heal clean and I can go back to work, but I have to pass a physical with the department before that. I'm sure I'll pass, but I'll be glad when it's over. I still really, really wish that it all didn't happen. I think that if I had time to see that car coming at me, and know it was going to hit me, then why didn't I have enough time to get out of the way? But I didn't and there's no point in crying about it. Not that I ever cried about it. No way. But I still feel that way and there's no point in saying that I don't either.**

**They say you're supposed to look on the bright side of things. But I really can't think of anything good coming out of getting hit by a car ****ecepth**** except maybe one thing.**

**If one of us had to get hit, I'm glad it was me and not Roy.**

Maddie finished the essay, her red pencil at the ready, but she really could not think of anything that needed to be marked. John still was not a good writer ( he used too many 'really's ), but he was a better one. She wrote a note that his focus and structure were much better and then scrawled a star in the upper right corner.

She put it with his first essay of the class. It was the only assignment that she had the students hand back after she read them. She did not want them looking at them when they wrote their personal narratives again.

Taking the class list, she marked 'pass' on the twenty-two who had made it through the whole eight weeks. Sandra and Helen had dropped out after five weeks. Sandra had whined about how unfair it was that it was too late for her to get a refund.

Maddie picked up John Gage's essays again. She had seen the news story about the fireman who got killed falling off a burning building and wondered if John knew him. But she couldn't ask. It seemed a shame to her that he had not met anyone special in the class. He did the all the class work. And, with a bit more enthusiasm than some of the girls. He at least had a decent character.

If he was fifteen years older, Maddie might have considered going out on a date with him herself. Even if all a firefighter-paramedic could afford was hot dogs.

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Roy looked up from the lawnmower in his front yard, the air around him scented with dry, cut grass with a hint of gasoline. Johnny's white rover had just stopped in front. Roy shut the mover off as his partner practically bounded up out of the car.

"You passed?

Hands raised in victory, Johnny demonstrated his fitness with a little fancy footwork. "I passed! Fit and ready for duty. Be on the next shift with you." He slapped Roy's arm. "Partner."

"Well, that's great!"

"Oh wait." Johnny dug up a folded paper from a back pocket of his jeans. "Look, I passed the creative writing class, too."

Roy squinted at the typed page. "Wasn't it pass/fail anyway?"

"Well, yeah, but it's still a pass." Johnny looked disappointed that Roy wasn't more impressed.

"Roy?" Joanne, a slim woman with auburn hair and eyes as green as her husband's were blue, came out the front door. "Hi, Johnny!" She joined her husband.

"Oh, hey, Joanne."

"Johnny just came by to say he passed his physical."

"That's wonderful. Maybe we should celebrate. I could make something special for dinner."

Johnny suddenly looked worried. "Oh, that's great, Joanne, but I've got a date tonight."

"A date?" Roy raised his eyebrows.

"Yeah. There's this new girl at headquarters." He grinned. "Eleanor. I'm taking her to a movie. But - -" he waved his hands in inspiration, " - - we can celebrate later."

"Yes, Johnny." Joanne nodded her permission to her husband's quirky partner and put her arm around Roy.

"Great! I'll see you tomorrow at the station." He bounded off to his car, started the engine and was gone.

"Why don't I cook something special for us tonight anyway?" Joanne had spent a few long nights with him after the hit-and-run that came too close to killing Johnny. They had known each other since grade school, married and had children years before Roy had become a paramedic when the program was just getting started. Johnny seemed to come with the package, they worked so well saving lives together. She did not want to know what her husband would suffer if Johnny's life was one he could not save.

She kissed him, a quick, affectionate peck and went back to the house to defrost a roast. Roy started up the mower again.

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Maddie sat down at her typewriter and put in a fresh, blank white paper in it, her notebook on one side, some completed typed pages on the other. Her cat meowed for attention and hopped up on the desk. She picked the cat up and put her back down on the floor.

"Not now, Georgette. Mommy's got to pay the rent." Eyes on the handwritten pages she started typing.

**Her home was a total loss. Everything gone. Hungry yellow flames filled the black skeleton of the frame; the tall streams of water from the fire hoses were only meant to keep it from spreading. There was no hope of saving it. Her books, her research, her record collection, her toothbrush. Sitting on the running board of the fire engine in her torn and dirty nightie, a blanket over her shoulders, tears ran down her sooty cheeks.**

"**Ma'am?" The fireman who had carried her out had divested himself of mask, helmet and air tank, changing from the black menace emerging from the flames to a man not much older than she, mid-twenties, with thick dark hair and dark chocolate brown eyes.**

"**Ma'am, are you hurt? My name is Jimmy Sage and I'm a paramedic . . . "**

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**Disclaimer:** All characters belong to Mark VII Productions, Inc., Universal Studios and whoever else owns the 1970's TV show Emergency!; I am just playing in their sandbox.


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